Future Echo

I posed a question... It is argued that the British culture that I grew up in was one of honour-and-shame. Cricket was not just a game but an attitude to life, a moral code. Something that ‘wasn’t cricket’ was against the moral code we grew up with. Honour and shame have always been driving forces in my life.  It’s argued that Jewish culture is more righteousness-and-guilt than honour-and-shame. These two cultures are radically different though it could be argued that shame is the result of personal guilt. But what does one feel, guilt or shame?  Both these two systems create a community culture of morality that binds it together, albeit from a radically different basis.  Is working class culture, was it one of those two cultures or something different still? Were you more driven by righteousness-and-guilt or honour-and-shame? But then I realised it was more complex than that and needed an explanation to be able to even ask the question. I knew in my mind what I meant by ...

(FIRST DRAFT - WILL BE REVISED AND APPENDED) In a previous post, I wrote about the Impending Economic Tsunami and laid out some of the history of economic theory and why Doughnut Economics might be the way forward. That post was long and a bit complicated. It also focussed on resource limitation and shortfall, which though critical is not the only potentially existential issue facing a large percentage of the world population in the next generation or possibly two.   Resource limitation/overshoot Resource shortfall Population plateau Termination of world expansionism Initiation of new world order The Road Ahead was a book by Bill Gates. One of the most significant quotes from that book is that  ' people often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in the next ten '. It is too easy to dismiss the challenges facing us globally because we are thinking 'nothing will happen in the next two years' while not addressing those i...

This is a difficult post to write, so please bear with me. I am honoured to consider Ethan Gutmann a friend and I hope this post honours that friendship. Until earlier this year I thought Ethan and I had very a different lineage. Then I discovered I am a distant descendant of Rebecca of Flanders who was a crypto-Jewess and of the Khazar Jews of Eastern Europe who married into the Scottish royal family from which I am descended. Then I found that my great-great-grandmother was a Messianic-Jewess. But that was emotionally as far as it went. Decades ago I walked through the gas chambers of Auschwitz and I felt a sickness. Almost more so when I saw the punishment cell just 1m x 1m for four prisoners. I met survivors in Poland. Christians who claimed almost as many Christians as Jews were killed there, though I could not verify that claim. It was a memory burned into my psyche. Block 11  and  (left)  the "death wall", Auschwitz I, 2000 photo by  Anneli Salo Then 7 Oct...

Please note this is a work in progress and any comments are appreciated. Peer Review additions February 2022 shown in purple Quick read summary Since Homo Sapiens appeared on this planet they have been subduing it. Being sapiens they developed models for the economy which we now call GDP . In recent years there have been changes to the SNA, which is the UN document countries use to calculate GDP. I question the reliability of the global and national GDPs as measurement instruments. It started with the bursting financial bubbles of 2008. Then added cryptocurrencies that aren’t even paper linked to economic activity. Add to that climate change. Then Covid 19. And consumption will plateau due to a population no longer expanding. We have banking instruments that are virtual and, in some cases, recursively virtual. And the SNA champions those activities. I thus perceive we are heading toward some sort of  Impending Economic Tsunami !  The GDP figures are inaccurate, in part ...